North Eastern Road Trip - June 28
Today we were back on the road. I got up at 8:00, had eggs and toast for breakfast, and packed up my things. As soon as we were at the bottom of the driveway, my mom realized that we had left our water bottles and I ran back in to get them. By we finally left and headed southwest towards Gettysburg. We passed by my dads' office here, and went too far down US 202 and had to turn around.
One weird thing is that two days ago, we went to West Point, yesterday, Valley Forge, today, Gettysburg, and tomorrow, Harper's ferry. They are just about the four most important military points of interest in the United States, all in four days. We stopped at a Wendy's for lunch and had chicken nuggets and fries. I really do not like Wendy's, but my parents do so I have to live with it.
I washed my hands with one of those little sani-towels and pulled out my dad's computer. First, I typed for a while, but I got sidetracked finding where we were on the Rand McNally atlas program. When we finally got to Gettysburg, I directed my dad to the different campgrounds so we could find one that we liked.
We found a pretty good looking campground, but the weather looked like rain so we went ahead to the Gettysburg visitor center instead of setting up our tents. We did not look around much in the visitor center, but we did see an electric map presentation. It was a twenty-foot by twenty-foot map with light bulbs on it to show different things; the narration ran through the entire four days of battle. After that, we walked through the bookstore, stamped our passports, and got back in the car. I now have 50 stamps in my National Parks Passport!
I thought that we were going to take the driving tour with the tape, but we did not buy the tape. We just followed the route, which was on the map, and stopped at each of the marked stops along the way. There were memorials to different states and regiments everywhere, and thanks to the map presentation, I actually knew what was going on. We all got out of the van four or five times to take pictures. One time, I could not get the picture that I wanted because there was a guy in the way. It ended up with both my mom and dad mad at me.
After the tour, we drove to a different campground, Granite Hill, just to check it our, but we ended up camping there. I set up Michael and my tent, while he and my dad set up the dining fly. We had not used it yet this trip, but it had rained some already today, and it looked like more to come. Before I was finished setting up the tent, the rain came. I rushed to pull out my rain jacket and after about ten minutes in the rain, I finally finished setting up everything.
We all stood under the dining fly for a while, but I decided that I could get wet and I put on my swimsuit and got wet. When my mom started pulling out boxes from the back of the van, we noticed that they were all soaking wet. I pulled all of the dry things up to the front of the van, and they pulled all of the wet things out of the back. Apparently, water had been condensing on the big icebox for the entire trip, and it had been collecting under the mat in the back.
The dress clothes bag and the box of books were the only important things to get wet, but they all pretty much dried out and we put some of the things back in the van. I changed back out of my swimsuit and went to put my things in the tent after the rain stopped, but my side of the tent was soaking wet! So I pulled out my things and put them back in the car.
We had steaks and pasta for dinner, and after that, we hung up all of the wet things to dry now that the rain was gone. I decided to sleep in the car, and my dad did not think it was a good idea, but there was nowhere else for me to sleep so in the car I slept. I went to bed around 9:00, and it took me longer than usual to get to sleep because the seat would not tilt all the way back, but I finally got to sleep.
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